“The community has chosen everything – they worked on the brand name, the packaging as well as on the [product] scents and the textures.”In fact, she said, the transparent, white and gold colour scheme was not one put forward by the brand but picked out by the panel of women, who came to have a very strong sense of brand ownership.

“Influencers should be incorporated into every aspect of marketing — from product creation to market research and all the way through campaign planning and marketing execution. Integrating influencers into every step of product development is the future of the industry.”

The benefits of this approach include:

Nurturing a core of sustained advocacy between users and the brand.

Having a ready-made fan base to promote the product as soon as it’s launched

Increased likelihood of high engagement rates. We know that people take the recommendations of friends and family before those of ‘experts’ or the brand itself